Old Linagraph Film

I have about 20 boxes of unopened Kodak Linagraph Shellburst 1200ft 70mm B&W film with an expiry date of 1991 .Would it be worth my while to build a trimmer to cut this to the width of 120 film ? The film was not refrigerated for about the last fife years,but just stored in the house .Could one use this film at a reduced ASA rating ,say ASA 50 and make up a special developer for it if it has fogged a bit ? I think the rating is ASA250 when it was fresh .I also have about 10x500g bottles of Antifog no9 . Can I use this in normal B&W developers like Antifog no1 or is it not compatable? We used it in the ECN process at work.I think it was also used in the earlier VNF process that we used to run.
Many thanks,
Leon Korkie (lsk)

My expernence with outdated fogged film is limited, but you should probably not rate it at a slower speed, as this would further lower contrast, and increase printing exposure time.

If this film has been in sealed cans, then it is probably OK. I just exposed and developed a few sheets of Kodak Ektapan that expired in 1980 and it is fine without fog. It too, has just been stored at room temperature in my darkroom. It was in a factory sealed package. I wouldn't be as concerned about fog as I would be about trimming it accurately enough to wind onto a spool along with the backing paper needed to run thru a 120 camera.

HC-110b is a very good developer choice for old film, as it produces particularly "clean" results.

I've got a bunch of that stuff around here too. It was made for instrumentation cine cameras. Kodak rated it at ASA 500 for cine's iirc but I do recall anytime I ran it through a Nikon (I had lots of 35mm at one time) I would rate it at 250 ASA. You'll find it fairly grainy as it's pretty early technology for a "fast" film. Do some snips a few feet in and put one straight into fixer, the other a "normal" development time then fix. Side by side you'll see what kind of fog you'll have to deal with. There were long roll backs available for some cameras to use 70mm without any extra handling. I have one for our Hasselblad. You roll about 15 feet into a cassette and it feeds into a take up cassette. Graflex also made backs as did Mamiya. I always wanted to get my hands on some of the 70mm aerial bw infrared to play with, but never did.

Thanks for the feedback,
I loaded a 4x5 holder with some 5 inch pieces today and shot it through the Linhoff . I developed in HC110 at 1-60 for 4minutes at 22deg C . The negs looked good and I made nice prints on Ilford grade 2 paper . So I guess it is worth spending some time to build a trimmer to cut the stuff to 120 width .

70mm Film

I have a Singer Graphlex RH50 (? iirc) 70mm long roll holder for a 4X5 if you've any interest. Makes 6X7's. $120 Thanks. Jim